To StarDaPanda225: FF has been down for quite a while, so chapters 4 and 5 on here were messed up, and "Patrol Log" chapter 6 was messed up, too. Last night it finally got figured out, so you should be able to go back and read chapter 4. Bri gets explained… eventually.

To Lyger 0: I imagine that Barkk is close to all of her holders (Kwami of Loyalty), regardless of how good they are. The challenge for the holder is to be worthy of her trust. And part of the answer to your question about Bri and her father comes in this chapter…

Antoine was almost floating on cloud nine when he returned to their warehouse hideout after lunch. Bridgette was still closed off to him, but she had answered his text. And she had met him for lunch. It wasn't back to normal. He didn't have another time scheduled to meet up with her. But after her complete silence toward him all summer, he would consider this to be progress. Maybe before they returned to Paris he would have another opportunity to see her.

Now if only he knew what had caused her to suddenly become so cold and distant toward him.

"Looks like lunch was good for you!" observed Gaston, who was dragging a large box over to the workbench. He pushed it up against the bench next to a second box, straightened up, and wiped his brow. "If we're going to stay here for a while, maybe we should invest in a dolly or something. This stuff is heavy."

"After this you'll be able to use the suit to haul around any larger components," Antoine assured him. "Once we get these new plates and servos installed, we won't need to make any major upgrades to the legs for a while – only adding a layer of heat shielding if we can manage it."

"That's good, because these boxes must weigh 150 kilos each!"

Antoine grabbed a knife from the bench and slit the box open. He nodded approvingly on seeing row after row of miniature servos, all with wires coming out of one end. The other box, rather than servos, contained metal sheets of various thicknesses, silvery in color. "I can work with this," he determined, glancing up at Gaston. He flipped a switch to turn on his miniature forge. "Give me until tomorrow and I will have the legs finished. And there may be enough material here to replace the most badly-damaged sections of the chest piece."

"Good; the old chest piece is really starting to show its age." Gaston clapped him on the shoulder and walked over to the door. Over his shoulder he called, "I'm going to check around town. See what I can dig up about these two heroes."

While the forge heated up, Antoine started the plasma torch to start cutting out the correct shapes for the new leg pieces. He grimaced at the device; he would much rather have brought the plasma torch from his workshop in Paris, but that would have raised too many questions from Night Bat – and the less Night Bat and Lynchpin knew about their trip to London, the better. At least until they could return to Paris with a complete, upgraded suit. So a hand-me-down plasma torch scavenged from an industrial site would have to do.

Once the pieces were all cut on the plasma torch, Antoine heated the metal and curved it to fit together properly on his small anvil. With the sound of the forge and clink of his hammer the only sounds in the warehouse, he found his thoughts drifting to the projects he had done with his daughter. From an early age he had known that Bridgette was destined to be an engineer like him. Where other girls her age had been interested in dolls and tea parties, she had always enjoyed building things. She had constructed a working mechanical crane at eight years old. She had started learning computer programming around the same age. But even more than that it was her creativity: she could look at a mechanical problem and work out the perfect solution faster than most engineers could even identify all the variables. That was when he had known that she was going places. With training, she would become an even better engineer than he was.

Unfortunately, sending her to a science and technology lycée that would challenge her and help foster that creativity was going to be expensive, and when she had entered collège he had realized his salary wasn't going to be enough to cover it. That was when the trouble had started.

The hammer slipped in his hand and he let out a low curse, dropping the plate and sticking his stinging thumb in his mouth. Even five years later it still hurt. It wasn't fair! His microchip had been revolutionary! His invention had placed the company on the map, allowed them to revolutionize the growing field of machine-assisted human activity. And yet the company had paid him no more than his regular salary. His invention had made them hundreds of millions of Euros in the first two years alone, and he had received the same measly €135k he would have received anyways! That was enough to cover their usual expenses, but not enough to also afford the best lycée for Bridgette. When he'd gotten the offer to deliver his microchip to a competitor, he had wrestled with the decision for weeks before finally agreeing to it.

Unfortunately, one of his coworkers had been in the park at the same time and seen the handoff.

The evidence against him had been circumstantial at best; the criminal case had been dropped due to lack of evidence. But after the bad publicity of the investigation, the buyer had refused to pay and his own employer had fired him. Not only that, but they had blacklisted him so no other company would hire him. When he had contacted the buyer and threatened to go public if they didn't give him a job, they had threatened a countersuit against him for defamation! The best job he had been able to find was as a collège math teacher, a significant pay cut that had hardly paid their bills, let alone private school tuition. Bridgette had attended the general lycée instead of the science and technology school. Yet even with that she had continued to flourish and improve, largely by studying on her own. She'd had her pick of universities, and Antoine had wanted for her to have the best chance at success. Tuition in-country was free, but there were so many other possible expenses that could arise, especially if she wanted to work on her own projects on the side.

This time, when the Lynchpin had approached him, he had not hesitated to accept the new job. After all, the Lynchpin had promised him the opportunity to do what he loved and receive a lucrative salary for doing it.

There was a bitter irony in the fact that, despite having earned more than enough money from Lynchpin to pay for Bridgette's tuition, she hardly wanted anything to do with him.

The warehouse door creaked open, loud in the silence of the warehouse, and Antoine looked up, his hand drifting to the energy pistol he'd set on the bench while he worked. Gaston stepped inside and shut the door carefully behind him, taking one last look around the outside yard before turning away from the door. "We might have another chance," he announced, crossing to lean against Antoine's workbench. "The Royal Mint is making drops at all the branches this week, and I got a glimpse at the driver's schedule while he was in a bank making a delivery. I know which branches they will visit today and tomorrow. We play it just like yesterday, and maybe this time it works out."

Antoine frowned and ran a diagnostic on his tablet to confirm that the servos on the left leg he had just finished were actuating in sync. "We've already done that once, and with mixed success," he pointed out. "You do know what the definition of insanity is, right? So what if instead of targeting one of the branches they visit we target the armored truck itself? There's more loot on the truck, and the truck is a possible getaway vehicle if we plan it right."

Gaston nodded slowly and picked up a map to spread across another table. He poked several locations on the map as Antoine watched over his shoulder. "This driver is going to start here tomorrow, and then go to these banks afterward. But if we set up here… we can get the whole shipment, less the first delivery."

Antoine looked more closely and shook his head. "Here," he told him, selecting a different spot on the map. "If we pick a spot at the very beginning of the run, we won't know exactly when it will get there; after that first stop we can time it and gauge traffic conditions. I'll write up a quick algorithm to predict the route based on time of deliveries and traffic, and we'll know exactly where the truck is and when it will arrive at the ambush location. It means losing out on some of the take, but I think it's a better chance of success."

Gaston shrugged. "You're the boss."

"What did you find out about these heroes?" asked Antoine, putting a few drops of lubricant on a bolt before starting to reassemble the leg.

"Zilch."

Antoine cocked his head and stopped what he was doing. "Nothing?"

"They're ghosts." Gaston furrowed his brows. "No one knew anything about that other suit, just what the papers managed to catch from last night – a couple grainy photos. As far as I can tell, no one had ever even heard of that mechanical suit guy before he threw down with me. And as for the dog?" He shrugged. "A couple sightings here and there over the last month or so, but nothing beyond that."

"So they're new." Antoine straightened up and cracked his neck. "That's good."

Gaston gave him a dubious look. "You think it's a good thing that we got our asses handed to us by a couple rookies."

"If they're new, that means they are inexperienced," explained Antoine. "They will make mistakes. Meanwhile, we have been fighting the Heroes of Paris for months. You've fought Taureau Dechaine and Cat Noir to a draw. We know what we're doing, and we have the equipment to fight them."

"If you say so." Gaston frowned. "I'd still feel better if the suit were in a little better shape and we had some anti-miraculous weapons in the arsenal again." He looked at the partially-disassembled suit legs and cocked his head. "How is it going, anyways?"

"Don't worry; it will be ready in time," Antoine assured him. He sighed wistfully, his eyes following where Gaston looked.

"Thinking about your daughter again?" Gaston gave him a knowing smile. "It's only been a couple weeks, and I already miss little Richard."

Antoine nodded ruefully. "Doing this, I can't stop thinking about when we would build robots together while she was growing up. We bought the sets, but we only ever mixed and matched to create our own designs." He sighed. "I think that's when I knew she was going to be an engineer."

Gaston snorted. "Richard loves playing with Legos, but I have no illusions of him becoming the next Gustave Eiffel! He probably won't follow me into this particular line of work, but that's fine by me: I'd rather he didn't join the family business."

Antoine chuckled. "While I am thrilled that she is studying to become an engineer like me, I want to keep Bri as far away from this particular 'family business' as I can," he agreed. "I want her to have a chance at a decent life, without being defined by my mistakes."

Gaston nodded and clapped him on the back. "Good luck with that."

AN: I… may have binge-watched a bunch of Hacksmith videos recently…

A note on French schooling: I know public school and university are both free in France, but as far as I can tell the specialized lycées such as Antoine describes would have additional tuition. And based on their website King's College is not free.